The world should be alert and with its eyes open in the face of the imminent conversion of Venezuela into an Iraq, a Libya or a Syria, due to military aggression of the US, together with Colombia and the OAS.

The Southern Command has already surrounded the fatherland of Simon Bolivar, and the Colombia of Juan Manuel Santos is playing the lamentable role of the principal mercenary in an adventure that could set alight the whole continent and break the dreams of Celac, of  Latin America and the Caribbean as the only zone of peace.

These are not mere alarmist expressions. The evidence is overwhelming and their protagonists are not hiding anything. Kurt Tidd, chief of the Southern Command of the United States, announced in Colombia their intentions of military action against Venezuela, assuring that Bogota and Washington would continue to work to overcome the threats to security, though he did not explain what these were.

The pretext for the widespread military movements that cannot be hidden, is the same as usual: a presumed struggle against drug-traffic, with which the Pentagon hides plans underway to attack Venezuela by undertaking operation Atlas, that is mobilizing some 10 thousand men from the military and police forces, in Tumaco and zones close to the border.

General Tidd is carrying out the instructions given by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, when he was sent by Donald Trump to announce to the continent a gigantic return to the Monroe Doctrine of “America for the Americans” (ie the Yankees) that they aim to reestablish with the defeat of the Bolivarian Revolution, without caring about the atrocious and terrible genocide that it will mean.

This explains the surprising decision by the [Venezuelan opposition] Mesa de Unidad Diplomática to retract the peace agreements reached in the Dominican Republic and to withdraw from the negotiations. Everything is highly dangerous and in this madness, President Santos, the so-called Group of Lima and the OAS with Luis Almagro at its head, are playing a mercenary role, for which history will call them to account.

All this means that the government of Donald Trump has already begun the preparation of the war, and this can be corroborated just by entering the Catatumbo del Norte of Santander, on the Venezuelan border, specifically in the populations of Tibú and Tarra, to see the mobilization of armed mercenaries that will be employed as cannon fodder.

Similar movements are occurring in Villa del Rosario, where the so-called self-defense bands have expanded throughout the popular districts as instruments for a foreseeable invasion of Venezuela facilitated by Bogota, and in areas of Cúcuta, where paramilitary forces operate with sporadic incursions into Venezuela, principally in Llano Jorge and San Antonio del Táchira.

If such preparations have not made more noise, it is because since the beginnings of this century, with the increase of US military bases that began in 2009 and which at present total over a dozen, there is a permanent military deployment which has increased year after year with the creation of new areas along the Venezuelan frontier around the territories formerly controlled by the ex Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), as keys for a foreseeable invasion of the neighboring country.

A special place appears to be assigned to two US military bases of rapid action installed in the communities of Vichada and Leticia, in the Colombian department of Amazonas, bordering on Venezuela to the Southwest of the country, forming an arc with those of Palanquero and Tolemaida in the interior, Malambo on the Atlantic coast, Apiay and Larandia in the Oriental Plains and Saravena, located on the border line on the Arauca river, and that located in the Bahía Málaga on the Pacific coast.

Moreover, in the encirclement of Venezuela, there are US assault troops in the bases for control and monitoring Reina Sofía, of Aruba, and Hato Rey, of Curazao, whose centre of operations is in the Palmerola base, in the Honduras of the coup-mongers, to which we can add the numerous troops maintained in Panama where the Southern Command is preparing personnel of the US Air Force.

The Trump government, in addition, is widening its military structure against Venezuela with a network of long distance radars, such as that which operates in Tres Esquinas (Caquetá, Colombia). Furthermore, it is undeniable that the Colombian Armed Forces are the largest in Latin America, larger even than those of Brazil, and that Santos was the minister of defense who participated directly in the new US military deployments that are still operational.

The military siege of Venezuela, that the White House doesn’t even bother to cover up because of the superlative arrogance of their government, is, counterproductively, an expression of the failure of the policies applied to date to overthrow Chavism and the Bolivarian Revolution that has survived against all odds, under the leadership of president Nicolás Maduro.

Washington, Donald Trump, the Pentagon, the oil hierarchies in the United States, the businessmen of that government, appear to have come to this foreseeable extreme point where they estimate that the only solution acceptable for them involves the destitution of [president] Nicolás Maduro and regime change through genocide, and not through peaceful means such as voting and the consultation of the people, as was being negotiated in the Dominican Republic.

13/02/2018

(Translated for ALAI by Jordan Bishop)